Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/233

 served by him. Tt appears as though Mr. Tilak became unhappy outside prison walls and was only contented when he became a tapasi doing his penance, if necessary, in prison garb and on jail diet. He is a born hero, and created situations for himself unlike Mr. Gandhi who, faced by a tyrannous conjunction in a foreign land under the same sovereign power to which he was subject, illumined himself by a philosophy, religion and ethical code of conduct and overcame with their help the forces of unreasoning political power and prejudice. The greatest merit in Mr. Gandhi is that he has, after his return to India, kept himself steadfastly to those principles of life and living with the help of which he triumphed over his racial and political adversaries in South Africa. It is comparatively easy to rise to a moral altitude under the pressure of great emergencies ; but to remain there, making a permanent abode of it, after those exigencies have passed away, not lapsing into currents of thought more congenial to the changed conditions, is indeed demonstrative of the hero that was always alive in Mr. Gandhi, although dormant, prior to the South African struggle. Especially